


Boyfriend Rite Of Passage

by ryrowentz (othellokink)



Category: Panic! at the Disco, Young Veins
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 15:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/othellokink/pseuds/ryrowentz
Summary: “I’m coming with you,” he stated at the feeling of Ryan’s inhale. He knew what he was about to say. They’d already had the “You don’t have to join me, I would understand if you wanted to stay here with them,” conversation about a thousand times.





	Boyfriend Rite Of Passage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pechebaie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pechebaie/gifts).



> I promised I would post this as an Easter gift for my boyfriend, but as y'all know, my ass writes approximately as fast slugs run, so here it is a month and a half late. Just fuck me up.

“Ryan, are you sure about this?”

It was the fourth time Jon had asked him that today. Ryan looked up at Jon’s reflection from where he was fixing his hair in the dressing room mirror. Though he stayed quiet, he let his hands drop and turned around to lean against the vanity, nodding his head slowly. “I’m sure. Come here?” he answered, holding his arms out a bit in invitation. 

Jon stepped over to him and reached up to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Ryan settled against him. “I’m coming with you,” he stated at the feeling of Ryan’s inhale. He knew what he was about to say. They’d already had the “You don’t have to join me, I would understand if you wanted to stay here with them,” conversation about a thousand times. 

Instead of starting up the long dead argument like Jon was expecting, Ryan looked at him and smiled, nodded his agreement. Jon didn’t think either one of them really wanted to argue, even if lately their arguments had been ending in breathless kisses and fucked up hair and clothes. Besides, there was no time to fix themselves before having to go out on stage. Crowds could sense tension.

“I love you.”

Not to say that they had never expressed love for each other before, but this was different somehow. This was more than casual affection between band mates. Hell, this was more than love in passing to his partner. They were about to shift the entire course of both their lives together. Maybe, just maybe that made it more important somehow. 

“I love you, too.”

xo

Ryan and Jon’s formal exit from the band was just as clean and easy as could be expected. 

Fuck, it had gone so much worse than either one of them could have thought. 

Jon, at least, had believed that Spencer and Brendon were fully aware of he and Ryan’s relationship, and he was pretty sure Ryan had thought so, too. Spencer had spent a solid twenty minutes screaming at that for letting their secret relationship ruin the band, and Brendon had broken Ryan’s guitar and had Zack practically throw them off the bus. If nothing else, at least they had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t know. 

Deciding to leave Panic! Had been hard enough on Ryan, Jon knew. He thought he’d exercised a lot of self control in not shoving Zack off him and physically attacking Brendon or Spencer, whoever was closest. He wasn’t a violent guy, but Ryan had broken down sobbing, and Jon couldn’t stand to see him like that.

It was at least a few hours before Ryan’s sobs died down into soft hiccups, then into nothing but slightly labored breathing. He was tucked against Jon’s side, Jon rubbing small circles in between Ryan’s shoulder blades in an attempt to calm him down. It hadn’t worked for shit, but Ryan hadn’t started hyperventilating, so it was kind of a win. 

“Do you think they hate us?” Ryan asked in a small voice, sometime before midnight. 

Jon answered with a shrug before his brain caught up enough to grant him the decency to lie. “Yeah, probably.” 

When Jon realized what he said, he looked appalled, but when Ryan sat up and looked back over him at his shoulder, he didn’t seem to care. He looked wrecked and tired, but not like what Jon had said had really caused him anymore pain. 

“You’re probably right,” Ryan replied, leaning forward to rest his head in his hands, fingers tugging at his hair out of sight of Jon. 

“Ryan, they’ll forgive us - they don’t hate you. They won’t, not forever. They’re just angry.”

Ryan straightened up and threw Jon a tired smile over his shoulder. “I’m going to take a shower.”

xo

“So, you should move in.”

Jon was thankful he wasn’t holding his bowl of cereal very high off the table, so it didn’t slosh much or spill over the edges when he dropped it in favor of trying to hack up the cereal and milk he was pretty sure he’d just inhaled when he gasped. “You can’t just drop that bomb at seven in the morning!”

“It’s noon,” Ryan answered dryly, taking a seat across the table from Jon, then reaching over to steal his cereal. He rested the bowl in his lap and patiently waited for Jon to stop coughing so he could talk. 

“I mean, you basically live here anyway,” Ryan said around a mouthful of soggy cornflakes, “And the lease on your apartment is up in like a month anyway, so I don’t see why we can’t just pay someone to pack your things and send them out here.”

“How do you know when my lease is up?”

“Jon,” Ryan pulled out his best version of a whine and puppy dog eyes, a few of his favorite tactics for getting what he wanted. “I want to live with you. Officially. Like, boyfriend rite of passage and all that. Please.”

“I’ll think about it if you give me my breakfast back,” Jon answered, having absolutely no idea how to respond. Ryan wanted to live with him. He really wanted to live with Ryan, too, but fuck. Living together. iInd of hard to process when you had just woken up.

Instead of surrendering Jon’s cornflakes back to him, Ryan set them on his own side of the table and stood. He rounded the table and pushed Jon back in his chair, swinging his leg over Jon’s lap and sitting down. Ryan’s arms were resting on Jon’s shoulders when he shook his head and leaned in to press their lips together. “It was soggy anyway.”

xo 

Jon was falling asleep over the shopping cart, and it really was adorable, aside from the fact Ryan had to stop every few seconds and nudge him back to reality. “Jon, come on, wake up. We’re almost done.”

“It isn’t humane to make me get up and force me to be in public this early in the morning, Ryan,” Jon complained, but he straightened. In a few minutes, he’d be slumping again, and both of them knew it.

Ryan’s laugh was warm as he grabbed one of Jon’s arms and tucked it around his own waist. “Okay, but it’s ten in the morning, and as much as I wish we could subsist entirely off weed and ice cream, we can’t. We need to have food in the house.”

“I think we could subsist off weed and ice cream,” Jon stated. Fuck, ice cream sounded good now. “Can we get ice cream?”

“Yeah,” Ryan responded, glancing at a piece of paper that Jon assumed was a list, no matter how much it surprised him that Ryan had actually planned this trip.

xo 

Adjusting to living with Ryan was absolute hell. It didn’t make much sense that actually living with Ryan would be so hard, Jon had practically lived with him for months prior to actually moving in. Ryan said it was probably the knowledge that Jon didn’t have any place to go if they got in a fight now, and Jon could accept that, sure, but it didn’t make it any easier to take in the fact he was living with his boyfriend. 

“If living with me pisses you off so much, why don’t you leave?” Ryan’s voice was muffled around a mouthful of cereal, but steady. They fought like this at least five times a week, he could have this argument in his sleep. It always started and ended the same, muted fear that maybe this time was really the end of them, bleeding into half hearted apologies. 

Ryan never questioned whether Jon loved him, or whether he loved Jon. Loving someone didn’t mean you were compatible with them. He thought briefly of Spencer, wondered if three years down the road, he and Jon would be in the same rocky place of painful silence, wanting to hate each other but not having the heart to put in it. Well, at least Ryan didn’t have the heart. 

“Because I don’t fucking have anywhere to go, remember? You convinced me to get rid of my apartment and move my entire life to California to be with you!” Jon sounded exasperated, like he couldn’t believe Ryan still had to ask him that, but at least he wasn’t yelling. Yet. 

For a moment, Ryan wondered if this was what he had feared from the beginning. He’d yet to veer off the general script of their arguments into that dangerous territory, but.. If nothing else, maybe it would get them somewhere, even if that somewhere was Jon packing his things and crashing out of Ryan’s life. 

“You could always go back.”

It was enough to make Jon pause, turn back, glare at Ryan. His expression was some perfect mix off pissed off and confused. “What?”

Another shrug, another bite of cereal. Ryan watched him with eyes half lidded, playing it off like what he was about to say wasn’t meant to dig Jon in a way he knew would hurt enough for a real reaction. “You could go back. Spencer and Brendon would have you, you know that. You never had to choose me in the first place.” 

“And just why the hell wouldn’t I have chosen you? You know how much I love you!” Jon didn’t like the smile that was playing a Ryan’s lips. It was the look he got when he felt like he was winning something, and Jon didn’t want to think about Ryan feeling like he was winning by hurting him.

After a moment, Ryan sobered and leaned back in his chair. His smile and vanished when his arms crossed over his chest, and it just looked like he wanted to protect him. He did. As much as he hated fighting with Jon, it beat not talking at all. Most times. “You do? I honestly can’t tell anymore from the way you act.” His voice was just as small as he seemed to be trying to sink down into his chair. 

Jon looked incredulous. Jon looked offended. “Love is a two way street, Ryan. You’re no saint, you haven’t been trying to fix this miraculous fuck up we managed, either.” 

It was something. An invitation or a truce, should Ryan choose to accept it. They couldn’t exactly wipe the slate clean, but Jon was willing to try and fix them if Ryan was. “We’re not perfect, Ry,” Jon started, leaning on the table across from him cautiously. “And I can’t promise you that we’re not going to fuck us up beyond repair and hate each other in a few years. But I love you now, and I think that counts for a hell of a lot. I want to find a way to fix this so that we can spend our lives together and be happy about it. But you gotta want us to last, too.:”

Ryan was still and silent. For a moment, Jon thought Ryan was going to say no, that the damage was done and that he would help Jon look for a new place to live, because that’s honestly the kind of person Ryan was. Jon almost turned around to go pack his bags before Ryan nodded. 

“Okay. I do.”


End file.
